


hold me tight or don't

by sultrygoblin



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Mild Language, Moving On, Past Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:26:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23605267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sultrygoblin/pseuds/sultrygoblin
Summary: one shot -everyone is trying to get over something. to move on. but what do we look for on the other side?
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Original Female Character(s)
Kudos: 3





	hold me tight or don't

**Author's Note:**

> i was sleeping much later than i should have and had this pop in my head. because i think steve could’ve had a less ooc ending but it didn’t have thoughts for that. just steve meeting a lady. have it. i might write more. i might not. if people like it i probably will. but enjoy blocks of text. jrr tolkien, i did this for you!

He runs and she sits, notebook balanced on her lap, chewing a bottom lip as she scratches down whatever thought it is that posses her at such a rapid pace he's not sure if she'll ever be able to read the words. Every pass she seems to be deeper and deeper into whatever it is. She's never looked at him, he's never seen her face, just a curtain of pin straight burgundy that hides her from him and the rest of the world. But she seems to know he's there. They do this for weeks, a little moment of the world before leaking in, and he feels like that scrawny boy from Brooklyn, passing glances at a girl he's too scared to talk to. He's Captain America but she doesn't seem like the type of person who cares about that. That morning he arrives, the sun barely rising over the horizon and she's sitting there, on that bench, just like always.

Except it's not, she's got the notebook closed and she's just watching the rising sun with a smile on her face that seems as if she knows something that everyone else in the world didn't. She just might, he has no idea what secrets lay on the pages in that notebook. It's a beautiful smile, better than he imagined, _she's_ better than he imagined. He can't put his finger on why but she reminds him of Peggy, even though they look nothing alike. There's an energy around her, the kind that he remembered her having, a woman who would always defy expectation.

He should start running, “Is this seat taken?” he doesn't, stopping next to her in front of the empty spot.

She turns that smile on him and it's a punch to the gut, “I think you know it isn't,” he's never seen green like the shades kaleidoscoping in her eyes.

“Get stuck?” easing himself into the seat beside her and pointing at the notebook.

Her thumb nail drags across the first letter of her name - _Talulah_ \- carved in the cover, not etched, “I finished.”

“Wow,” he's honestly impressed, it was a thick tomb, he can't imagine how long she must've spent filling each page, “What's it about?”

She finally turns her head to _actually_ look at him, it's staring at the moon, the stars, and it's a familiar feeling that comes from deep in his chest, “Hope,” it sticks around even when her eyes turn back to the pinks and oranges, “Do you ever just stop and watch the sun rise? Every day, no matter what happens in our universe, it always manages to drag itself over us, giving us life, our planet life, when we haven't done one thing for it,” tucking an errant lock of hair behind her ear, “Do _you_ ever think about it?”

There's a pointedness to the question, as if she has spent this entire time trying to build up the courage to ask him, “I haven't,” he answers honestly, following her gaze.

He thought of sunsets often, of things disappearing and being lost. How every day comes to an end no matter how hard you tried. He hadn't stopped to think about the sun since the days before he'd lost himself to the ice, and to time itself. But he'd like to, he'd like to find happiness in a small moment. Like watching the sunrise or writing beside the water or sitting on a bench wondering. Her hands clench the book tightly, her whole body turns towards him but she seems saddened to pull her eyes away from the brilliant colors. Lifting the tattered thing, she holds it out to him, offering it to him.

“I couldn't,” but she shakes it lightly, he takes it from her and it seems so much smaller in his grip, “Why?”

“I think I wrote it for you,” she shrugs, climbing to her feet, tucking her pen behind her ear, “No, I did, I did write it for you. I just didn't know that's what I was doing,” keeping her eyes trained on him, “I'm really happy you asked to sit down.”

“Me too,” he replied, with a nod.

It's the end of this conversation, a natural conclusion to a moment that didn't quite seem to exist. More like a passing daydream. It might've been. If not for that book.

{}

Her names is Talulah Harper, she's an only child, she's lived in the same brownstone her whole life according to her, and she believes in soulmates. He'd spent his day reading the pages, unable to yank his attention from the carefully looped words that seemed more at home with 18th century love poems than a modern woman's errant thoughts. Though to be fair, it wasn't a book of errant thoughts, was it? She had written it for him, somehow, some way. Poems seem to break up the thoughts, some short, some long, sometimes they don't seem to fit but they always fill him with some feeling. He will always remember the first time he paused on those pages, feeling his eyes well up. It's a program for her grandmother's funeral, glued to a page far too close to the beginning for his liking.

The picture on the front is clearly them both but she's far younger than the woman he'd sat beside in the park that early morning. Her hair isn't burgundy but a bright blonde, missing her two front teeth, if it hadn't been for the eyes he might not have recognized her. _Miriam Harper. June 19_ _th_ _, 1922 – April 5_ _th_ _,_ 2012. _Loving Grandmother._ The service was small, so many services around that time had been, the date never escaping his notice. The pastor speaks, she spoke, and that was the end. No mention of parents or any other family. There had been none on the previous pages either. On the page beside it, in the handwriting he was becoming to acquainted with he might be able to replicate it, is one of those found poems that seem to stitch every story together.

_You can shed tears that she is gone  
Or you can smile because she has lived_

_You can close your eyes and pray that she will come back  
Or you can open your eyes and see all that she has left_

_Your heart can be empty because you can’t see her  
Or you can be full of the love that you shared_

_You can turn your back on tomorrow and live yesterday  
Or you can be happy for tomorrow because of yesterday_

_You can remember her and only that she is gone  
Or you can cherish her memory and let it live on_

_You can cry and close your mind, be empty and turn your back  
Or you can do what she would want: smile, open your eyes, love and go on._

He had to pause then, sliding an errant piece of paper between the two pages and setting it gently on the bed beside him. Peggy would always spring to his mind in moments like this, when the world around him could only become about her no matter how hard he tried. No amount of missing and remembering would bring her back to him nor would brooding and pining send him back to her. They had their moment, they had missed it, not entirely but enough. Maybe that's why it was so hard to let go and move on, they simply had never gotten the chance he both knew they deserved. How she had never seemed to see him as a boy but something bigger, something better, until he was forced to believe it himself. And she would never let him forget where he had come from, how he had come by all these adventures, because she never wanted him to forget it. Perhaps she had known that they would live a lift without each other or had simply expected it after all that had taken place before the end.

He pulls it back into his hands, flipping it back open and to the next page. _My amma was the best person I ever knew. No one ever went hungry when you she was around and the second you sat down at our table you were family. One year for Thanksgiving we had three turkeys just to feed all the family she'd gathered over, our brownstone stretching at the seams. I think I knew it then, I just wasn't ready to say it. I was as much a stray as any of these people. But it was Thanksgiving and I didn't think it was right to ask. She knew though. amma always knew. I was full of pecan pie, thinking I'd gotten away with sneaking glasses of brandy, and she sat down next to me with that smile. And she told me all about what she knew I'd already figured out. I thought it would matter, I thought where I came from was something important, that it defined me. I wasn't anyone different from who I was before she told me, I just knew it now. It had just become a fact. Then she handed me a glass of whiskey and told me if I wanted to drink, I should do it for real._

_That's the kind of woman Miriam Harper was. The war had taken her parents, her brothers, and her husband, she had been so horribly lonely. Instead of wallowing in it, she made her own family. I think it's important that we do that, the world doesn't always give you a family or let you keep the one you have. It's important to pull people close and hold them tight. It's easy to write people off, to keep them at arms length, it's so much harder to hold them close._

_I'm still learning how to do that. I try. But I don't have that family anymore, that was Miriam's family and I'm not quite sure how I start to make my own. I think I've started. There's this girl, Lizzie, she's 12 and lives up the stairs on the other side of the hall. Her parents fight, sometimes they forget to feed her or wash her clothes. I've called CPS but, the system wasn't great to start with, was it? I make her dinner, leaving it in a lunch bag outside. Sometimes she'll leave a backpack on my front porch, ringing the bell and running off. I think she's starting to trust me, she writes me notes. I don't push it because neither of us really know what we're doing._

_I still wake up at 5 am every morning, but there's no amma to take walking through the park or through the farmer's market. I've gone down to Potomac every morning since. I can't stand the silence, it's never been quiet in the house before and I'm not sure what I'm supposed to fill it with. Just that I'm supposed to fill it with something. I think I'm waiting for that something. I'll know it when I see it. I get what she meant by that now, I don't know but it'll snap into place. Just like Lizzie did._

It's dated four days after the funeral. In three and a half weeks, he'll start jogging there. And here he was, six weeks after that, reading her innermost thoughts. It's easier than talking, it goes at his pace, what he can take in. He's given time to think, remember, and muse. By the end he almost feels like they're on even footing, it's her own museum wing, and he's finally finished walking through it. Four days of his almost undivided attention dedicated to a stranger. Though she wasn't a strange now, not anymore. It feels almost strange now, knowing he's lived his entire life never knowing her but feeling as if he's known her the whole time. An awkward feeling he's been trying to way against all the love for Peggy he still held.

She's there the next morning, one hand in her pocket, the other holding a travel mug that steams. She's hoping for him but not expecting him, the only thing she expects is the sunrise. Sunrises are her favorite thing for so many reasons, he knows every single one of them now. He isn't there to jog, it's clear by his casual clothes, the way he makes his way straight towards her. She smiles, holding out the mug to him as her eyes flicked to the seat next to her. This isn't the time to talk, he hadn't planned to, just as he had hoped that this time she'd ask him into her world. It feels nice, just to sit next to someone that almost felt like home. It's hot chocolate she's passing him with a flavor he can't name, he's sure it must be an amma recipe and he will never discover the answer because of that.

Once the mug is empty and the sun is over the horizon, she turns to him with a smile, “Would you like to come over for breakfast?”

“You know,” standing and offering her his hand, “I can't think of anything else I'd like more.”


End file.
